Clean air cover-up.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Damn the scientific torpedoes! Full steam ahead!

Once again, the Bush administration has chosen to ignore clear and compelling scientific evidence and to let industry dictate how the federal government protects the health of its most vulnerable citizens.

In a report issued Thursday, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency said the agency's senior management ordered staff members to overlook scientific evidence and agency protocols in order to make certain proposed limits on mercury pollution reached a predetermined conclusion - one that conveniently aligned with the administration's free-market philosophy.

The report provides the latest example of how the administration is willing, even eager, to risk the public's health for the benefit of industries - in this case coal-fired utilities, the largest producer of mercury emissions in the United States.

The agency's top internal watchdog said the agency "compromised" its technological and scientific analysis in order to keep cleanup costs down for the utility industry. Senior management's marching orders were clear: Manufacture whatever evidence was necessary to make the case that the Bush administration's "Clear Skies" legislation could do as good a job of controlling mercury as either existing law or more stringent proposals.

In theory, the Clear Skies (how exactly does the administration come up with these Bizarro World names) proposal is supposed to achieve a 70 percent reduction in mercury. But it delays until 2018 the compliance deadline for industry.

The administration's proposal would eliminate a provision in the current Clean Air Act that the coal-power industry loathes. Called New Source Review, it requires companies that built plants before the existing law to install costly antipollution equipment.

For the coal power industry and its soulmates in the Bush administration, the bottom line concern is, well, the bottom line. The New Source Review provision threatens bottom lines of coal plant operators, particularly those in the Midwest and South where many plants would require costly major upgrades.

Administration officials point out that their Clear Skies proposal includes a cap and trade program that enables companies to buy and sell credits, potentially resulting in even more significant emission reductions than possible under the existing Clean Air Act. But a report earlier this year by the National Academy of Sciences confirmed that the Clear Skies bill would permit more emissions than current law.

Meanwhile, an EPA advisory committee last year reported that 15 percent of the 4 million babies born each year in the United States may be exposed to harmful mercury levels in the womb. Such exposure heightens the risk of fetal neurological damage and learning problems.

One would think such alarming reports would prompt the administration to do everything possible to cut mercury emissions and to support legislation that keeps New Source Review and mandates even more restrictive emissions reduc- tions.

But instead, the administration once again has chosen to ignore scientific evidence so that it can make certain the EPA reaches a predetermined conclusion - one that places the needs of industry over the health of children.